I was reading an essay yesterday about the decline of classical music. This actually saddened me a bit because I listen to classical music pretty often. But this was also interesting because my Bachelor’s Degree was in music and what he said was true. I had classes that were concerned with the history of music and what I learned there seems to line up with what I read about classical music’s decline. Music History traced the development of music and the composers that made their mark on history. But Music Theory also traced the development of music as we learned the theory that dominated the time periods. Both seem to bear this idea out, at least in my opinion.
I, like many others, have little to no interest in modern classical music. There seems to be very little to offer from modern composers that sounds good. There has, for the most part, been an abandonment of what is thought to sound good to our ear. The few that I listen to on occasion sound much different than what is oftentimes seen in modern classical music. These would be people like Eric Whitacre and John Tavener. Though I haven’t listened to them much students now listen to Pentatonix and I believe that they can be placed in this category also. So, what’s the difference?
I believe the difference to be a spiritual difference in Western Culture today and yesterday. As people live their lives in what they see as an impersonal universe governed by chance there is simply less that is beautiful to write about.
The Role Of Music And Poetry In Our Lives
I believe that music and poetry are the expression of our inner self. Deep emotions come out in poetry and music in a way that it does not in other forms. That is why people have often said that it is the “language of the heart”.
Have you ever heard a song and it move you deeply? Or maybe it simply expresses so perfectly how you feel at the time? I know that I have on a number of occasions.
At one point in my life, I had seemingly no direction just wandering through life not knowing where to go next. So, I was struck by how much the song “Time” by Pink Floyd resonated with me. At one point in my life I had friends who were not really my friends, so the song “Fake Plastic Trees” by Radio Head fit that time in my life very well. I now am stirred by Handel’s Messiah around Christmas and Easter. I love many old hymns that speak of God’s grace and mercy in my life such as “Jesus Paid It All” and “There Is A Fountain”. This music moves me, or has moved me, because it is an expression of my deepest feelings.
If music and poetry are the language of the heart, which I believe and is usually taken for granted today, then what has happened to music today?
Where’s The Heart?
“Musical modernism is what was left behind after the feelings which motivated the great classical composers had dissipated. What you are hearing in the dysfunctional harmony and unattractive groans of Harrison Birtwistle and his many imitators is a massive God-shaped hole, where once natural authority and faith resided. This is what “atonal” music really is: a loss of faith, and this is why anyone who counteracts its dominance is quickly condemned as “naive”, in just he same manner as those who continue to hold religious convictions in a scientific age. It is what has led composers such as Robin Holloway to confess that “all we like sheep have dumbly concurred in the rightness of [Schoenberg’s] stance; against the evidences of our senses and our instincts.”
The point that Rudland is making is quite clear. Naturalism is dominating the landscape today. As naturalism, which is the belief that there is no supernatural at work in the world, grows the result is a loss of convictions and a loss of heart. The result that we see in music is that it is deteriorating under the weight of the ideology of chance. If all is created by chance, as the naturalist must contend, then there is nothing in the Universe that is truly transcendent. The thought of something truly splendid outside of us is replaced by chance existence and it causes the soul to rot. As the soul rots, so does the music.
A World Of Meaninglessness Leads To Meaningless Music
Francis A. Schaeffer was a Christian apologist who actually wrote quite a lot on this topic. I think looking into some of his excellent insight on music’s deterioration as he was writing back in the 1960’s would be quite helpful. His response to the deterioration of music is this.
“If God exists and we are made in His image we can have real meaning, and we can have real knowledge through what He has communicated to us. If this is taken away we are left only with man and his finite self-expression. At this point all one has is the expression of the individual man.”-Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who Is There, 1968, p. 71
When we think back to composers who were the giants of classical music, for the most part, they were writing music that was Christian. And if it wasn’t Christian then they were swimming in a culture that was Christian and was the worldview that they operated in. There was something grand outside of their self. And as that is being taken away in thought, for I do not believe it can actually be taken away (God exists whether you believe it or not is what I’m saying), the soul has no meaning. Why then would it be shocking for music in a meaningless age to have no meaning?
The Truth Is That There Is Meaning
Here is the truth. There is meaning in the Universe. You were created in the Image of God (Genesis 1:27). You were created to be a reflection of the transcendent God who created all things. You have been created, but not just created for a meaningless existence. You have been created for a purpose.
The problem is that we have rebelled against God. And our rebellion was not meaningless either. It has intense meaning. We have rebelled against our Creator, the transcendent God who we are to be reflecting. We have rebelled against the created purpose for our lives. The sin in your life is not meaningless, it has intense meaning. It means that there is real and actual guilt that stands between us and God that needs to be dealt with by someone other than you. For there is nothing that you can do to get rid of this real guilt. But God has done something to get rid of it for you. Schaeffer tells us what God has done for us rather beautifully.
“If there is true moral guilt in the presence of a personal God then perhaps there will be a solution from God’s side; and God says to man, there is a solution. I am holy and I am love, and in my love I have loved the world, and I sent my Son. Now in history, there on Calvary’s cross, in space and time, Jesus died. Never speak of Jesus’ death without linking it to His person. This is the eternal second person of the Trinity. When He died, with the division that man has caused by his revolt now carried up into the Trinity itself, there in expiation, in propitiation and substitution, the true moral guilt is met by the infinite value of Jesus’ death. Thus Jesus says ‘It is finished.’”-Franscis A. Schaeffer, The God Who Is There, 1968 p. 106
Man caused there to be a real and true division between Himself and His Creator through rebellion against God. And God’s solution was to send His Son to die for us in history. Christ died as our substitute, taking our sin upon Himself and paying for it on the cross.
That is something with some meaning. That gives our lives meaning. That is an idea that will give us music with meaning. That is an idea that transcends our petty lives. That is an event in history that gives life to the soul.
R. Dwain Minor
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